Ken Griffey Jr Home Runs By Season
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Playing at the Kingdome against the Royals, Griffey Sr. batted second for Seattle, and Griffey Jr. hit third right behind him. Since Oriole Park at Camden Yards opened in 1992, the B&O Warehouse on Eutaw Street beyond the right-field wall has stood as an inviting target to left-handed power hitters. The exceptionally talented family pair played together for two seasons, in 1990 and 1991, as Senior’s career was winding down and Junior’s path to the Hall of Fame was beginning. Who knows where Griffey could’ve landed on the all-time home run list if he didn’t miss the equivalent of two full seasons between 2002 and 2004 because of injuries.
Yes, you read that date correctly – this was the second time in Griffey’s career that he hit a milestone home run on his father’s birthday. This one was a little extra special because he became the youngest to reach that number at the young age of 30. If you grew up in the 1990s and loved baseball, it was required that you spent time alone in your bedroom re-watching Ken Griffey Jr. home runs while imitating his swing and strut. To be real, though, if I had to watch him hit baseballs on loop for hours on end with no break, I wouldn’t be mad at all. Griffey, the only player in the history of the Home Run Derby to win it three times , was there to see if New York Mets slugger Pete Alonso could match his feat and to present the trophy to this year’s winner of the annual event. This was one of the first video games to have alternate uniforms for a sports game.
Ken Griffey Jr. went yard 16 times in his rookie season in 1989.
He is also an honorary co-chairman of the AOPA Foundation's Hat in the Ring Society, a charitable organization that promotes aviation safety and education. Writer Bill Simmons pointed out the prevalent belief that Griffey was the best home run hitter of the 1990s who everyone was convinced never used performance enhancing drugs. Therefore, Simmons stated Griffey was the one player who would be the most devastating to "an entire generation of American men" should he ever be linked to steroids.
Griffey tied Harmon Killebrew for eighth on the all-time list hitting his 573rd career home run on May 22. Griffey finished the 2004 season on the disabled list after suffering a rupture of his right hamstring in San Francisco. The play in question occurred at AT&T Park in a game against the San Francisco Giants. Griffey was starting in right field for the first time in his 16-year Major League career when he raced toward the gap to try to cut off a ball before it got to the wall. He slid as he got to the ball, but in the process hyper-extended his right leg, tearing the hamstring completely off the bone. He later came out of the game, complaining of "tightness" in the hamstring exacerbated by chilly conditions in San Francisco.
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But unfortunately, that’s when the injury bug started to bite, as he played in just 158 games between 2002 and 2004. Thanks to an incredibly powerful few years in the late ‘90s, The Kid put himself in what seemed to be a favorable position to challenge Hank Aaron’s career homer record of 755. I mean, when you rifle through 100 homers every couple of years, it’s hard not to think about that. The 2000 season was also his first with the Cincinnati Reds after getting traded and signing a big extension with the organization.
After hitting his 400th dinger on his father’s 50th birthday, he hit number 500 on Father’s Day, with his dad in attendance. Julio Rodriguez ended up falling just short of winning the whole thing after hitting another 31 home runs in round two, because in round three J-Rod was outdone by 23-year-old Nationals star Juan Soto 19 home runs to 18. Rodriguez finished the night with 81 home runs to Soto’s 53, but Juan did what he had to do to take home the title.
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When Griffey Sr. signed with the Seattle Mariners (Griffey Jr.’s team at the time), no father and son had ever even played together on the same team. On Sept. 14, 1990, Ken Griffey Jr. and Ken Griffey Sr. made history, as they have been known to do, when they became the first father-son duo to hit back-to-back home runs in a game against the California Angels. He’d hit three more that season with Chicago, with the first one being number 609, which tied him for fifth all-time with Sammy Sosa on the all-time list. Can you imagine what it feels like to hit 300 homers in the big leagues before you turn 30 years old? At the time of this homer, he was the second-youngest hitter to reach the milestone.
"Today is a great day for baseball. It’s a great day for Seattle. It’s a great day for the Mariners." He had a .284 batting average, 2,781 hits, 630 home runs, 1,836 RBIs and 1,662 runs scored. He won 1 Comeback Player of the Year award, 10 Gold Glove awards, 1 MVP award and 7 Silver Slugger awards. Griffey came in fourth for the AL MVP voting in 1998, but he just further cemented himself as an inner-circle Hall of Famer, and he wasn’t even 30 years old yet. When you hit 112 homers over the span of two seasons, it’s easy to make quick work of the all-time leaderboard while ascending to the top.
Griffey was the number one overall selection by the Seattle Mariners during the 1987 Major League Baseball draft held on June 2, 1987. On June 11, 1987, Griffey joined the Bellingham Mariners of the Northwest League, a Class A Short Season minor league. During the 54-game season he hit .313 with 14 home runs, 40 runs batted in, and 13 steals. Baseball America magazine named him the league's number one major league prospect. Griffey Sr. finished his 18 year-long career with a .296 batting average, hitting 152 home runs and recording 859 RBI. On October 30, 2008, the White Sox declined a $16 million option on Griffey, making him a free agent for the first time in his career.
Griffey may have escalated it by saying that he would never play for the Yankees, because the Yankees allegedly treated his father, Ken Griffey Sr. badly. Also, when Griffey was a kid visiting his dad in the Yankee clubhouse, Yankee manager Billy Martin would, believing that children did not belong in the clubhouse, kick him out of there. The play also inspired the title of the video game Ken Griffey Jr.'s Winning Run for the Super NES.
Both Griffey Jr. and his father stated that the incident changed their relationship, and since then, there has been better understanding for both of them. On August 20, 2008, Griffey hit his first home run as a member of the White Sox, off the Mariners' R. A. Dickey, which moved him into a tie with former outfielder Sammy Sosa for fifth place in career home runs. He surpassed Sosa on September 23, with one off Minnesota's Matt Guerrier. At the beginning of the 2007 Major League Baseball season, Ryan Freel took over center field for the Reds, and Griffey Jr. was moved to right field.
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The two back-to-back blasts marked Griffey Sr.’s third home run of the season and Griffey Jr.’s twentieth. On June 2, 2010, with the clubhouse still in turmoil, Griffey left the Mariners after the second game of a four-game series with the Minnesota Twins, leaving in the middle of the night for a cross-country drive to his home in Florida. He released a statement through the Seattle Mariners organization announcing his retirement effective immediately. Mariners president Chuck Armstrong was only made aware of this by Griffey's agent a few hours before gametime the next day; Griffey then called from the road to confirm it. His retirement was announced at Safeco Field before the Mariners played the Twins.
After coming up short a couple of times in the recent past, Griffey also etched his name among MLB’s Home Run Derby winners during the All-Star break. Since he did this during his age-26 season, this dinger helped him become the seventh-youngest MLB player in history to reach that number. There’s also something special about hitting a milestone home run at a historic stadium like Fenway Park. From the standpoint of fWAR, 1996 was Griffey’s finest work, as he posted 9.7 fWAR in 140 games played. At that time, he had enjoyed his third season of 40-plus homers and set a new career-high for the time being with 49 dingers and 140 RBI. Griffey was criticized by some for his effort during his stint with the Reds.
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